“Yes.”
“And the Council?”
“Will take either answer and use it toward its preferred conclusion, as always.”
Cosima’s face had gone too completely blank.
She was beautiful like that, which was a terrible thing to notice now. Gold Mark at her collarbone. Dark hair pinned without a strand out of place. Full lips held steady by force, not calm.
Beautiful, and sad enough that looking at her felt like another kind of theft.
“What would you have me do?” I asked her.
Cosima gripped the folded paper tighter.
Then she let it go.
“That is a terrible question to ask a girl who loves you.”
The words pulled the air from the room.
I had known.
Of course I had known. For most of my life.
Knowing was not the same as hearing it spoken aloud. She had never said the word before.
I should have looked away from her.
I didn’t.
“Cosima…”
“Shh, don’t say it, Caspian.”
“I wasn’t going to be unkind.”
“Any words you spoke in that tone would break my heart right now.”
She said it with such certainty that I closed my mouth.
Her eyes went to the cuffs because the alternative was my face. My eyes went to the floor for the same reason.
Then she looked up, and I felt her eyes burning into me.
“I would have you be the man you keep trying to become around her. Not the man they want you to be.”
“And if that man disappoints my father?”
“Caspian.”
Her voice changed enough that I looked at her again.
“I was fourteen when they bonded me to a man who could not disappoint anyone powerful enough to matter. He was kind afterward. Very sorry afterward. He explained afterward that he had done what had been required.”
She stepped closer.
“It was still wrong. And that man is dead now anyway. Do not be that man. Be the Caspian I know.”
